Why he should not be president
By Eugene Robinson
April 6, 2020 at 3:04 p.m. EDT
... Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Trump spent a good part of Sunday’s covid-19 briefing touting the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid-19. Why is he so convinced? Because “they say” it works.
Who are “they” who make such a claim? Certainly not the expert scientists who are supposed to be leading the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said repeatedly that evidence of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness is at best anecdotal ...
There are, indeed, small preliminary studies conducted in China and France showing, according to their authors, that hydroxychloroquine is of some benefit to patients suffering from covid-19. I am no more qualified than Navarro or Giuliani to evaluate those studies. But Fauci has pointed out that the study in France involved just 20 patients with no control group, and that six other patients who were originally part of the study cohort were dropped and excluded from the results, including three who had to be put in intensive care and one who died ...
Reporters tried to ask Fauci again about hydroxychloroquine Sunday, but Trump would not let him answer. We have a president, unfortunately, who is often wrong — but never in doubt.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-one-word-that-explains-why-trump-should-not-be-president/2020/04/06/0ae070cc-7828-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html